Thank you for your enthusiastic response in the past day. I received an email asking about summer recruitment - "if we want to work around the summer enrollment fees and stuff, how much time would we spend doing computational stuff, discussing literature, etc?". I think this question may be something in many of you guys mind as well, so I want to share my response with you all :D --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Literature reading takes time and effort. I would say that the
literature reading would be at least as hard as a 4-5 credit course.
It also the key differentiation factor between a researcher and a
technician. I wish you can train your brain with me, rather than your
hands.
My work lead once told me that when he start to work on something, he
would spend two months doing nothing but reading literature: basically every single paper relevant. As a quote from my professor goes: Two hours in the library can save you two months of lab work. This all
comes back to the idea of risk management: it takes a lot of effort
doing benchwork, so we want to disqualify the fast failures as much as
possible, as early as possible.
Computational analysis is no different from lab work. Although we
enjoy sort of luxury of working from offsite, some computational works actually requires you to come to the lab. Since many jobs demand very huge computational capacity! Some assignments takes days to a week to complete. And believe me, a lot of guidance is needed onsite from our fellow colleagues.
So back to the question: how much time requirement? I assume a related question is: Is it worth your time if in the end if there is a
probability that credits don't count?
For the first question: There is no time requirement. Entrepreneurs
don't work by the hour, we follow our heart and passion. It all
depends on whether me and my project may trigger the spark inside you.
The rest is trivia. That's why I repeatedly say: If you share some of
my passion, let's go through the path together.
For the second question: I am pretty sure that we may transfer the
virtual summer credits to the your fall credit (especially if you continue to work with me during the fall semester). But I personally believe that by the end of the day, skills rather than number of
credits defines a person. People look at what you can do, not what
courses you have taken. I would definitely encourage you come
experience R&D in a prestigious institute as JBEI. Many of my friends currently working in the industry have to pay $40,000 a year for a small bench space in JBEI; And they have to raise their own research
funding which ranges from $40,000-10,000 a year. Now, because you are
a UC Berkeley undergraduate, you may have the opportunity to experience everything for free! I guess course credits is a really minor concern in this case.
Thank you for your enthusiastic response in the past day.
I received an email asking about summer recruitment - "if we want to
work around the summer enrollment fees and stuff, how much time would
we spend doing computational stuff, discussing literature, etc?".
I think this question may be something in many of you guys mind as
well, so I want to share my response with you all :D
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Literature reading takes time and effort. I would say that the
literature reading would be at least as hard as a 4-5 credit course.
It also the key differentiation factor between a researcher and a
technician. I wish you can train your brain with me, rather than your
hands.
My work lead once told me that when he start to work on something, he
would spend two months doing nothing but reading literature: basically
every single paper relevant. As a quote from my professor goes: Two
hours in the library can save you two months of lab work. This all
comes back to the idea of risk management: it takes a lot of effort
doing benchwork, so we want to disqualify the fast failures as much as
possible, as early as possible.
Computational analysis is no different from lab work. Although we
enjoy sort of luxury of working from offsite, some computational works
actually requires you to come to the lab. Since many jobs demand very
huge computational capacity! Some assignments takes days to a week to
complete. And believe me, a lot of guidance is needed onsite from our
fellow colleagues.
So back to the question: how much time requirement? I assume a related
question is: Is it worth your time if in the end if there is a
probability that credits don't count?
For the first question: There is no time requirement. Entrepreneurs
don't work by the hour, we follow our heart and passion. It all
depends on whether me and my project may trigger the spark inside you.
The rest is trivia. That's why I repeatedly say: If you share some of
my passion, let's go through the path together.
For the second question: I am pretty sure that we may transfer the
virtual summer credits to the your fall credit (especially if you
continue to work with me during the fall semester). But I personally
believe that by the end of the day, skills rather than number of
credits defines a person. People look at what you can do, not what
courses you have taken. I would definitely encourage you come
experience R&D in a prestigious institute as JBEI. Many of my friends
currently working in the industry have to pay $40,000 a year for a
small bench space in JBEI; And they have to raise their own research
funding which ranges from $40,000-10,000 a year. Now, because you are
a UC Berkeley undergraduate, you may have the opportunity to
experience everything for free! I guess course credits is a really
minor concern in this case.
Thank you for your time reading my long emails :)